Our results consistent with EC’s - CODEO

Parallel results put out by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) from Friday’s polls gave President John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) 51.38 per cent of the total valid votes, compared to what the Electoral Commission (EC) declared.

The Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) system, which is a scientific exercise to independently verify the accuracy of the official results of the EC, gave the New Patriotic Party candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, 47.17 per cent.

The official figures announced by the EC last Sunday gave President Mahama 50.70 per cent, with Nana Akufo-Addo garnering 47.74 per cent.

The Co-Chairperson of CODEO, Mr Justice V.C.R.A.C. Crabbe, told journalists in Accra that the figures were consistent with those of the EC, although they might not match the official results perfectly due to the data sampled.

“This gives CODEO the confidence that the results of the 2012 presidential polls declared by the EC are generally an accurate reflection of how Ghanaians voted in the polls,” he said.

He called on the seven losing candidates and their supporters to place utmost confidence in the figures from the EC, since they were credible.

The coalition deployed 4,500 local and international observers across all 275 constituencies who came up with the figures.

Justice Crabbe said the PVT involved a nationally representative sample of 1,500 polling stations drawn from the official list of polling stations provided by the EC from all the constituencies.

He called on the EC to publish the election results of all polling stations in the country for the sake of transparency and verification.

He called on all the political parties and their supporters to respect the will of the people by accepting the results of the elections in good faith.

He commended Ghanaians for their comportment which made the electioneering generally peaceful.

The CODEO Co-Chairperson reiterated the call on all political parties to work towards ridding the country of what he described as the “political polarisation that characterised the 2012 electioneering, especially between the NDC and the NPP”.

That, he believed, was necessary to reduce the tendency for winner-takes-all politics.

The PVT estimated a voter turnout of 78.68 per cent, with a 0.58 per cent margin of error. That was close to the official EC figure of 79.43 per cent.

Its estimates of rejected ballots, which stood at 1.65 per cent, with a margin of error of 0.09 per cent, is also short of the EC’s figure of 2.2 per cent.

The PVT strategy, which was used by CODEO in the 2008 elections, has been used in similar national elections in other parts of the world, having been first used in The Philippines.